Why waste money on movie going when you can go to a baseball game instead? Portland Sea Dogs coming to town this week Alan and Portland......(if the rain ever stops)

I keep getting spam that sometimes i hesitate to delete. They always say things like "What a great site! Keep up the good work!" or "That was very informative." If only their "names" and accompanying URLs weren't such dead giveaways as to their real intentions...

Morning, all. I tried to read Angels and Demons and had to give up around page 50. I won't see the movie because of that, also because I read the non-fiction version, also because I'm really not interested. Now that I'm working, I miss the $4 matinees at the Bloor.

Angles and Damon? The Jays were in Anaheim last night.

Harass movie goers...which letter of the apostles was that in exactly?

Paul's. Definitely Paul's.

[long weekend. woohoo]

I thought Paul was more against TV representations of non-traditional families amd/or living arrangements. I read about that in the page turner <i>The Three's Company Code</i> back in '79.

About that Harper weakness that the Globe finds -- I think it would be easier to exploit had the Liberals not run their last two campaigns with the unofficial slogan, "Behold Stephen Harper -- fear him!"

Still, maybe there's something left in it.

***

Suspect you're right, however: exploiting Conservative divisions is probably the way that people can chip away at Harper's coalition.

Don't get me wrong - I wish the guy well as, frankly, he is in charge and no one needs another screw-up in the job. But consider how far from Reform populist inclusiveness we have gotten.

I studied comparative politics last semester, and one really interesting article was about how institutions shaped political movements, by making it necessary to appeal to the broad middle class.

The article traced the development of the Labour Party in Britain and its peers in other countries, how they went from advocating revolution in 1918 to appealing to middle-class homeowners in the mid-1960s.

Perhaps this is one of the effects of electoral politics? The broad middle class gets the leaders it wants?

[Or -- and this also seems likely to someone who read William Johnson's bio of him -- Stephen Harper never really was a populist. In fact, he probably would never have left the PCs had Preston Manning not convinced him to take on a role as policy officer in 1987. (Harper had been thinking of setting up/working with a "Blue Tory network" in the mid-to-late 1980s, to swing the PCs a little further right.)]

I guess a show-debate and close vote is better than the other option that Harper weighed: bypassing Paliament entirely and extending the mission via excutive order.

mulla dadulla? isn't he the guy who invented the rama lama ding dong? or did he put the bop in the bop she wop be bop? i can't remember. neither of those things seem like crimes though. i can't figure out why they'd want him.

seadogs are hot this year gary. boston has pitching and more pitching in their minor league rank. i can't figure that out either. good luck.

Ben, those are interesting observations. Harper is still playing out the character I sketched in the Tantrama series as far as I can tell.

Wind up Portland and watch him perform! Can't get enough.
Put yourself in a flat rate postal box, Portland, mail yourself over and join us at the Binghamton ballpark. Unlike Fenway, with the expensive seats with terrible views and dirty surroundings, the minors are a pretty good deal.

And don't forget to pack the camera! We need pics.

I just want a Binghampton Mets hat. They are sweet. Royal blue with an orange "B". It is like the hat that is half Soxs, half Mets. A Pedro-esque brain bucket indeed.

Alan has only posted a SMALL number of the pix taken at Cooperstown. Maybe more, Alan?

We'll see. Cropping is a bitch, you know. Those jpeg pixels don't just get squeezed without putting up a fight.

You need a genx40 flikr page.

This story as it develops may go some way to explaining why Canada is in Afghanistan and what Canada can do while there.

I have no idea how people can put their pictures on the servers of BorgMatrix MegaCo Multinational Inc. Anything you see here only gets out after approval by the Committee of Approvals and is protected on a few pieces of parchment guarded by my elven kin.

"I guess a show-debate and close vote is better than the other option that Harper weighed: bypassing Paliament entirely and extending the mission via excutive order."

That is to say, by doing his constitutional duty rather than taking a chance to wrong-foot the Liberal party. And, in so doing, risk throwing thirty-million Afghans back to the wolves.

I think that in addition to throwing Afghans to wolves, there has to be clarification that it is simply factual that the valleys of south-east Afghanistan and north-west Pakistan have become this odd sort of factory of bad where the local inter-valley rivalry that has exited since time began has been taken over by the violent fanatics who have perpetuated a fraud upon Islam and are foisting it upon the youth of those places in part through usurping the educational system for a couple of decades now. At the time of the injuries to Trevor Greene, I posted this short post with background information which has led me to understand that what happens in those rural schools is massively important to us in a way that even the events of Gaza and Iran are not. I think Flea and Gordo, however, on the question of the means to do this are not really disagreeing. There is an executive order required but there should have been more information about the why and that should be presented through a non-motion informational debate in the house.

Mr. Lovely makes my day.

The Big Trains are cool, but don't miss the museum's Giant Canoe Section!

All righty then. Let's just forget I said anything. :-)

cm, I am sure that it is 5 pm or 5:30 somewhere in the maritimes, therefore all of us good people should go find a drink.

Us little troublemakers, sitting in the back of class, passing notes...

I actually do pubs tonight so wish me well. What is there in Dryden, Gary?

My own kitchen, Alan, this evening. Dryden, of course, has the A-1, whose name really sez it all. There are little elves in their back room making little fried raviolis and monster calzones. (punting the cheese again)

"There is an executive order required but there should have been more information about the why and that should be presented through a non-motion informational debate in the house."

Which I was under the impression had happened two weeks ago. Perhaps that was about something else. I am sure I do agree with Gordo about the big stuff. I just this issue to too important for the political games being played in all corners of the House.

I agree the Taliban are Sunni crazies and their Saudi financed efforts are as much a distortion of much of Islam as, say, the Christian Identity movement is a distortion of much of Christianity. That said, the Taliban are also the result of the Pakistani secret service, a brutal Soviet occupation and global indifference to the torture, mutilation, rape and murder of a yet another faraway people.

Grand idea, gr. Cheers! ::raising a beer to all::

Just dropping by and there is Ben making sense, the flea making war and your Maritime friends a beeline to the bar....I'm going with (c). Well, actually, I'm off to buy some B-day Stellas and retitling my blog, Trailing Edge Boomer at 50.

Cheers...

Master F.: I would agree yet would also layer the experience of a Scots Sgt. Major great-grandfather who walked the same valleys as the Canadians do now over a century ago. Those brutalizations were of a particularly hard people, hardened to life by the environment as well as the putative colonialists of all sorts, the Soviets being latter day. The schools there are more important than the guns but we may need the guns for a generation at the schools to keep the Taliban out and who knows if the hardened themselves will allow that? It is a Rubik's cube.<p>Jay: any b-day needs something better than Stella. Contact me. I can help.

Jay: Alan is double-plus right about the Stella. Stella is double-plus ungood.

Alan: Maybe we (and by we I mean the British Army) (which is a bit of a stretch if you think about it) (my family are/were mostly Royal Navy) (except Grandad was in the Army and I am named after a cousin who was shot down over Holland by the Nazis) (pronounced Nazees) should enlist those Pashtun fellows in much the same way as the Gurkhas. Sort of like when Paul Atriedes carried on his father's plan of reaching out to the Fremen of Arakis then turned around and kicked Imperial Sardaukar ass all the way back to Salusa Secundus.

What an excellent idea. We (by which I mean English men in natty red officers uniforms) enlisted the Gurkhas because they were too good at fighting in their known territory. The same actually is true (except with English men in natty blue officers uniforms) of the Mi'kmaq in the Maritimes who had to be treated with respect after 22 British ships of various sizes were lost in 1722. Make friends with the big kid in that corner of the playgournd. My only fear is there is not really the Pashtun so much as the Pashtun of valleys A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H...JJJ, KKK, LLL, MMM... I think, though Ben will correct me, the Gurkhas are only in three valleys. Easier to identify the mutual enemy.